Komi Can’t Communicate

Komi Can’t Communicate is one of these shows that have ridiculously high scores on MAL but for the love of Aidios I can’t understand why. It’s a comedy that is not especially funny. It’s a romantic story with next to zero romance in it. It has lots of “unique” characters which in reality are generic and boring. It’s trying to tackle a problem of anxiety using the heroine who by all means is barely affected by it. It’s far from being visually stunning or something. There’s no plot. Yet, somehow it has an above-8 score. Mind-blowing.

I can’t even point my finger at what particularly is wrong with this anime because, frankly, it’s just average all around. Take the title character, Komi. She has a problem — she basically experiences panic attacks every time she’s interacting with people. You’d expect that it’d result in something like Watamote, an anime that legit was painful to watch. Nope! Komi-san is adored by everyone around her, she’s good at sports (how?! when she ostensibly barely leaves the house) and no one cares that she doesn’t talk. Should I feel any sympathy towards her? She reminds me of the main heroine in Kimi Ni Todoke, which also was surrounded by all-understanding and all-forgiving friends and yet the anime implied that we’d need to feel bad for her… for reasons. And Komi is probably the best-written character there! Other people there are simply one-dimensional dummies that work as plot-devices for unfunny and repetitive (let me repeat it — repetitive) jokes. By the way, I have nothing against using the same punch-line over and over again — some shows like Seitokai Yakuindomo or Grand Blue utilize it perfectly — jokes in Komi-san just don’t work.

The only moment that I liked from this anime happened in the end of the first episode, when I still had no clue what I was getting myself into. Tadano and Komi writing their thought together on a blackboard was really cute and touching. I don’t know if the manga is better and just the adaptation sucks, I don’t know if the second season will be better but I wish we’d gotten only that first episode as an OVA instead of that full-scale 12-episodes-long mess.

I decided to make this post my second in 2022, because I wanted the first one to be more or less positive =) Anyway, a few weeks ago I was writing that we’d gotten new restrictions in Ontario and I was wondering how all this would wind up. Well, we’re back to normal I guess — tomorrow the province is entering another lockdown. No indoor dining, capacity restrictions in stores, gyms and cinemas are closed and so on. I don’t remember exactly but I think last January we had the same restrictions, only now almost 90% of adults are vaccinated. Evidently, the vaccination campaign along with vaccine passports ended up being a resounding success, considering that pretty much all businesses requiring them will be closed for several weeks. The solution? I assume we’ll be hearing a lot about boosters and that you need to inform the authorities if you see a spoiled 5 year old brat who hasn’t gotten his jab — don’t forget, those selfish people are endangering all of us. Although I can’t wrap my head how the vaccine against the original variant would help with a new one, not to mention the fact that no one has any idea whether it’s safe to repeat the same shots again and again (LTC residents are already on their 4th as far as I’m concerned, so we can’t rule out the possibility that everyone eventually will be advised to get it). In the meantime, our provincial health ministers are cynically suggesting to download the QR code that will be used to access, well, places which are going to be closed starting tomorrow. The beatings will continue until morale improves.

I’ve been playing in a fantasy football league with my colleagues for 4 or 5 years now, and this year I finally won it for the first time. Wrote my name in the history of this company so to speak =) I think we still have a trophy in the office and before we’d even engrave the name of the winner’s team there. Good old days. Amazingly enough I finished first in the regular season as well — take this, yahoo! “You drafted C- team” =)